The mayor of the Mexico-U.S. border city of Matamoros survived an ambush by gunmen, authorities said Monday, the latest attack in surging violence in northeastern Mexico that has claimed dozens of lives and triggered a wave of kidnappings.
Mayor Leticia...

Mexican police and soldiers on Wednesday captured Omar Trevino Morales, widely considered to be the most important leader of the Zetas drug cartel that once carved a path of brutal bloodshed along the country's northern border with the U.S.
National...

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico The heir apparent of Mexico's most ruthless criminal organization the Zetas is an ex-con who spent more time in a Dallas suburb and later in federal prison than on the mean streets of this border town, the group's base of operations....

The top leader of Mexico's notorious Gulf cartel has been arrested while shopping in south Texas, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
Juan Francisco Saenz-Tamez, 23, of Camargo, in Tamaulipas state, was indicted by a U.S. grand jury in September 2013 on...

Alfonso Hernandez stands before a mural of Jesus Christ being ferried on a lion-drawn carriage, trailed by Catholic bishops and priests. Behind them, scores of men in crisp suits — some smiling, some somber, one in dark shades — kneel as they watch the procession.
They are among the dead of Tepito.
"It's called the mural of the absent. They're people from here," said Hernandez, a native of the famously tough — and famously untamable — Mexico City neighborhood. "These are people...

MEXICO CITY -- At least 15 people were killed in brazen shootouts over the weekend in the large coastal city of Tampico, in a border state that had been experiencing a relativeálull in organized-crime-related violence.
Mayor Gustavo Torres said Monday that the gun battles began Saturday night and lasted, sporadically, until Sunday night. He said the gunmen and victims were from the Gulf cartel, a drug-trafficking network that dominates part of Tamaulipas state.
Many in Tamaulipas said they feared a...

The increasingly costly and divisive border crisis is pushing federal investigators to crack down on money-laundering schemes they say are being used to smuggle thousands of Central American children into the United States.
Agents from the Department of Homeland Security and the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, are targeting suspicious patterns of deposits and withdrawals through "funnel accounts" held at U.S. banks, according to two federal law enforcement...

Gulf Cartel Photos

Arsonists torched four restaurants, bars and an auto dealership. A bomb threat evacuated a hospital. Bodies turned up, including a headless one at someone's door and a man snatched from the Wal-Mart store and dumped in a field. Gun battles raged within earshot of the main drag, Boulevard Hidalgo.
And that was just one recent three-day period in Tampico, Mexico, where business after business along that thoroughfare has closed, "for rent" or "for sale" signs dominate and few people venture out at night....

MEXICO CITY — The leader of the Gulf cartel, one of Mexico's oldest drug-running groups, has been captured, Mexican officials said Saturday.
Mario Armando RamÝrez Trevi˝o was apprehended by the Mexican army Saturday morning, according to a government statement. The arrest took place in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas, near the Texas border, Mexican media said.
Ramirez, 51, known as “El Pelon,” or “The Bald One,” was indicted on drug distribution charges in a U.S. federal court in...

WASHINGTON — A Mexican drug cartel commander pleaded guilty Thursday to murder and attempted murder in a 2011 ambush south of the border that left one American agent dead and a second injured, and which sharply strained U.S.-Mexico relations.
The commander, Julian Zapata Espinoza, 32, also known as Piolin, joined three other defendants who had previously pleaded guilty to various charges related to the shooting.
The developments in federal District Court in Washington also provided new details...